Burning Daylight: Frederic Remington, Electricity, and Flash Photography

Lecture by Alexander Nemerov, PhD, Chair, History of Art Department, Yale University

Between 1906 and 1909, in the last few years of his life, Frederic Remington painted some of his greatest pictures--a series of night-time scenes dramatically lit by firelight and moonlight. In this talk, Alexander Nemerov of Yale University discusses these moody, mysterious paintings and their relation to the technologies of electric lighting and flash photography then coming into widespread use. In addition to chairing Yale's Department of Art History, Nemerov writes about American visual culture of different periods. His most recent book, Icons of Grief: Val Lewton's Home Front Pictures, was called "superbly original" by the New York Review of Books. His next book, Breath and Shadows: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War, about a single night's performance of Macbeth during the American Civil War, will be published next year. In addition, he is the author of a book and several essays about Frederic Remington and the art of the American West.